Three weeks ago, I quoted Australian garden expert, Michael McCoy, saying “But what I’m forever chasing, and experience with joyous regularity, are those magical moments when conscious enjoyment turns to inexplicable enchantment.”

Since then, I have been thinking about those times in my gardening life. The first time I remember it clearly is when we visited Hidcote in the UK, back in 2009. It was Mark’s and my first independent foray visiting gardens in that country. Our original aim had been to see those gardens that were more or less parallel to ours – large private gardens managed by their owners without big budgets and just the occasional bit of outside assistance. We wanted to set benchmarks for our own garden. After the first 10 days or so, we were distinctly underwhelmed by what we had seen; we switched tack and went to see some of the better-known ones. Hidcote just blew us away. It was, quite simply everything we aspired to at the time. I italicise those words because our aspirations have changed direction in the time since but on the day, we spent hours there and came out of the garden feeling like stunned mullets. I wish I had better photos but I have never forgotten the feelings of being overwhelmed with delight.

On that same visit, we also saw the Missouri Meadow at RHS Wisley and it too, blew us away with its magic. Sadly, we watched it decline badly on subsequent visits but that simple beauty on our first sight is a memory that has never faded. It was an entirely new take on meadow or prairie gardening that was beautiful in concept and initial execution, if not in its subsequent management.

We were also entranced by what is called the quarry garden at The Garden House in Devon. The work of Keith Wiley at the time, I wrote about it being like a magic carpet garden and to this day, I have a photograph of it on my laundry wall of favourite travel photos.

We were so impressed by the quarry garden that we searched out Keith Wiley’s own garden on our next visit and that is a joyous triumph of vision, energy and plantsmanship. It was so inspiring it drew us back a second time on our next trip and it did not disappoint us on the second viewing which was just as engrossing as the first. We planned a third visit but Covid got in the way and, given that we rarely go back to gardens we have seen before on our brief overseas trips which are packed with garden visits, that tells you how special we regard his garden to be.

The soaring veronicastrums and thalictrum behind a unique hedge of waves at Le Jardin Plume in Normandy were pretty darned memorable, even as my own efforts to grow veronicastrum here continue to flounder and my thalictrum do not soar.

We have seen a fair number of Italian gardens on three separate trips but the moments of magic have been from incidental delights of wildflowers growing beyond the over-groomed austerity of many major gardens in that county.

Back in Aotearoa New Zealand, those moments of transcendent delight have been a little harder to isolate in my memory. Winterhome is a garden near Kaikoura that is usually represented by a view of the long pool that left me unmoved (I really don’t like the square pots along its length) but there were plenty of other parts that I loved, none more so than the casual outdoor dining area immediately in front of the house looking out to the ocean beyond and below.

On that same 2008 trip to Marlborough, my first encounter with a fully naturalistic garden right on the wild coastline was a revelation. I remember wondering if it could be described as a garden; now I have no hesitation at all in saying yes, yes, yes – albeit one without flowers or any pretensions to prettiness. I can’t remember the name of the man who created it and built the inground house but I think he was a well-known Blenheim architect.

Bluebell time at Te Popo Garden  back when it was still owned by our friends, Bruce and Lorri Ellis, was a special time, even if many of us have learned that bluebells can be determined thugs. A sea of blue is a visual delight. Even more magical, but in the days before I carried a camera, was seeing English bluebells in flower beneath deciduous woodland near Castle Douglas in Scotland.

And yes, our own garden gives me moments when pleasure transforms into joy, times when I feel my cup floweth over with happiness.

Readers may notice that my photos do not feature heavily defined and structured gardens with pristine maintenance. It is clear that, even before we realised it ourselves, both Mark and I have been drawn to a more naturalistic, softer-edge style of garden. The more I reflected on my memories of special experiences and searched out photo confirmations of those memories from my thousands of images on file, the clearer it became where our hearts lie. This is not to say that I can not enjoy or appreciate more structured, manicured gardens. It is just that that, to hark back to Michael McCoy’s comment, my ‘conscious enjoymen’t does not turn to ‘inexplicable enchantment’. Put more simply, they do no make my heart sing.

Didn’t even Marie Kondo decide that having children was a greater joy than having a well-ordered home?

Finally, nothing to do with gardens or plants, an image of a special moment of magic in fading light in the hillside village of Sermoneta in Italy. I may have taken this photo in June 2017 but I have used it on Christmas cards in the time since. In a country where Christmas comes in summer, it feels apt and it remains a special moment when time, place and light all came together in a magical moment, quite possibly aided by a few wines with dinner at the time.